Archer and his officers getting a hero's reception on Earth. Also, it's nice to see some more of Vulcan.

Body Count :

None in this episode. Archer establishes that 27 Enterprise crewmembers died in season 3.

Factoid :

This is the 79th episode of Enterprise, which means that it has now equalled the episode count of TOS.

This episode establishes that vulcan is 16 light years from Earth. This rules out Epsilon Eridani, which has long been thought to be the Vulcan system, as that star is only about 10 light years away. However it could support 40 Eridani, which is another popularly suggested star system for the location of Vulcan, as that system is indeed about 16 light years from Earth.

Plotline

With the Xindi threat over and the Temporal cold war ended, the Enterprise crew finally get a little time to relax on Earth. But Archer is struggling to come to terms with some of the things he had to do to achieve his victory, and Earth has changed for the worse since the attack.

Analysis

It's always nice to see the repurcussions of major events explored - too often shows like Star Trek put their characters through the emotional wringer, then have them carry on afterwards like nothing has happened. So the writers get credit for showing Archer more than a little frustrated and angry at the hero worship he's been getting, given some of the things he made himself do last year. However, while the intentions were good the execution wasn't great. When you compare this to, say, TNG's "Family", it suffers badly in comparison.

And what the hell is with Phlox's face? He's been under stress many times and we've never seen anything like this. Plus, why does everybody run away when he does it? I can imagine being a little surprised by it, but running away in fear?